


Uprooted

by Naegling



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: I Tried, Interspecies, M/M, Personification, Symbolism, post books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naegling/pseuds/Naegling
Summary: Legolas and Gimli meet at a crossroad and take a trip together. Trees give well meaning advice, and the stars are beautiftul.





	Uprooted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zana/gifts).



From the North there came a wind, to the great green wood. It had come with tidings of winter. Loud it roared and wild it raged. The leaves were torn from hanging boughs, the streams were frozen in their paths.

From the South a warm breeze blew, and the scent of spring lingered in the hills.  
The winds met in a glen of birches and drew their blades in a flash of lightning. The North wind won their battle, and claimed his victory.  
Banners of frost were hung on the branches, bare now of the emblems of spring. It howled in triumph as the south wind retreated. The wood was still and quiet, when the first flakes of snow, feather like and merciless fell upon them.  
Yet from the South there came, heedless of the freezing weather an Elven lord in Elven gray singing of the  
Summer.  
A voice as clear as running water, rang in harmony with silence. His steps as light as feather snow fell upon the ground. Gladly they greet him, the eldest among them the weathered oak and pine. Quiet still are the birch for their shyness, and the shame of their bare and naked forms. He sits beneath the gnarled oak, singing softly still. And skins a beast with bone white knives. The shadows of the trees grow long, and hide him from the eyes of men. He builds a fire and puts it out and warms his feast on glowing embers. The dead eyes of the beast shine, as though it is alive, but it is only starlight reflected on their surface. 

"Hark!" calls the carrion foul to the Elven lord, and lands upon his shoulder, and asks him for his name. 

The noble declines to give his name and offers instead his feast to share. The bird accepts his invitation.  
Crow and lord they dine together, until the bones are white, and smooth as Elven knives.  
In return the crow, gifts to the lord a song. A ballad of the Springtime a song of fading things. Of rushing streams and meadow flowers, and the love of mortal hearts. 

High and keening, sounds the final note, the bird, having paid his due, shakes his feathered shroud. And takes his leave of earthbound beings, of elves and trees, and winter. He flies South. 

The green wood is quiet, now the song has ceased. The lord bows his head in semblance of sorrow, as if he mourns. His downcast eyes and lowered head stir pity, in the wooden hearts of trees.  
The oak comforts him, craggy branches on his shoulder. 

"Alas" sighs the willow. 

"The birds their songs are sweet" they say,

"but they do not last".

 

The ancient leafless oak offers her sage counsel. 

"Let them roost upon your branches but give them not your love. It is not wise the oldest know, to love that which goes, what lives but for a moment, what can be stolen by the wind."  
And the oak means to chide as well, the young birches for their sorrow. They weep still for the leaves they lost to the cold. 

But up the Elven lord, looks toward the stars, and a smile is upon his grave and noble face. 

"My heart" he says,  
"I've placed in a pair of mortal hands, my fate is not your own. To linger here on eastern shores until the end of ages. Sundered I will be from the company of my people".

"It is not well" says the oak,  
" to love a thing that fades, to go from ones own land. There are no greener hills, there are no taller pines. It is not wise" said she. "To plant seeds in barren soil, Stay and be at peace, and rest your weary soul. Stay and plant your roots, let them anchor you to earth, drink deep". 

"I can not do this thing," he says, " that you have asked of me". 

Though he does not rise, and leans instead against the hoary oak draws his cloak of Elven gray tighter around his shoulders.

"Do not waste your heart on fleeting things," says she, and her branch's grip grows firm.

"Look up at the stars, at their eternal splendor, and love them as you always have. Let their light fill any hollow you feel with in yourself. You were made to love the stars."

"I was" his bright eyes, are half lidded, his head tilted up toward the black expanse of sky. 

"Give your love to the trees, who will outlast all mortals, who understand your heart, who love you in return". You could stay here for many ages of the sun, you were made to love the woods, the woods were made to be your home." 

"They were", he agrees and his voice is nearly a whisper. Roots around him wrap, he is still in their embrace.

"Your people often come through this glade, they will find you in the morning, they will greet you as their own. Hunting will they go, with their arrows and their knives you will lead them, lord, you were meant to lead your people".

"I am." he says, and starts, as if awake he has been shaken.

He thinks of a white stone city befit of growing things. How he wished to give it gardens. 'I was meant to lead my people.'

He thinks now of caves deep and long forgotten, glittering and lovely as the stars in the vaults of the ether. Of the beauty his eyes had seen, the song that he had heard.  
The knowledge of such wonder was not something he wished to keep to himself, it was a gift he hoped to give them, if he were able, if their eyes would look, if they would listen. He was meant to lead his people. 

There would be no rest for him, not for a long while. There were alliances to be made, there were seeds to be planted. His work was not yet finished and to the place he'd come from, he could not return. 

The boughs fell loose as he rose to his feet, the roots returned to the soil. He would not mourn for what had been, he would not rest tonight. 

"Fare thee well my friends" he says to the rowan and the willow. To the oak and elm and to the birch who'd dried their tears and wept no longer. Swift the Elven lord walked through the quiet woodland, singing of the summer. 

Gimli waited by the fork in the road, The first and meager day light was climbing over the hills. He had been waiting there for two days now. Had he planned to meet another dwarf at the crossroad by the green wood or any sensible folk, he would have been concerned and began to search for them. But he had come to meet a wood elf, and so he knew no search party would be necessary.  
How a wood elf measured time, he did not know, he doubted at moments if they measured it at all. A year, an hour, a day did not mean to immortals what it meant to him, so he waited.  
A few more hours passed and the rations he'd packed would not last him another day and night, so he packed his tools and dismantled his camp. The morning was dim, and gray, the grass was stiff with frost. A light layer of snow lay upon the hilltops and coated the pines, in a fine white dust.  
Gimli scattered the remaining ashes of his fire. He lifted his pack onto his shoulders, and turned to walk away. As he turned he saw, in the corner of his eye, a stirring of the branches. Out from behind the birches steps an Elven lord, with the light of the morning upon his shining hair. 

 

"Oh", he said, and only that.  
As if he had not heard his footsteps when he were still a league away, as if he had not expected to meet him there. Gimli says nothing.  
'I missed you, he would have said, I missed you as the earth misses the rain, when it has been stricken with drought'. 'I missed you as this frozen land longs for the sun', but Legolas was two days late and this he did not say. 

He knows Legolas must have meant to be on time, but Gimli is a mortal, and he can not wait for ever. Days do not mean to elves what they mean to him. There are somethings about each other they can never fully understand. There are things that can not be changed, differences that may never be reconciled. He wonders now, if he should have come at all, to the crossroad, at the wood line. 

Legolas holds out his hand, there is a sadness in his smile, and Gimli thinks he had at least realized he is late. But he offers no apology, or promises to change. He is a wood elf after all, if he could change that about himself, he would not want to. Gimli can not blame him, not for that. He looks up at the offered hand, alien and strange. Its proportions a direct contrast to his own. And in a moment of trust, of unconquerable love, of madness perhaps, he takes it. 

 

Northward ran the wind, and a strange sight it beheld. An unlikely pair walking hand in hand. Fast they approached a foreboding path, where old roads met and converged.  
Loud cried the wind his shrill voice rang, and he issued them a warning. Spake he to the Elven lord; 

"Are you certain this is the path, that you wish to take? It is long road, you see unpaved and uneven. Upon this road you will not find the understanding or approval of your kin. Nor the lightening of your burdens." 

To the dwarf lord he said, "It is not one your kind often deigns to travel, It is not the way they would wish for you to go. There are no shelters by the wayside to offer you respite. You will have to build your own starting from the ground.  
The seeds you sow may flourish not, here in untilled soil, and long you may not tarry. You will not reap your harvest, if it grows at all." 

To the pair the wind said this, his last advice. 

"At the end of this road lies years uncounted, lonely years of solitude. Winter unfollowed by spring. And after that, uncertainty, a vast, remote unknown." 

"You were not meant to take this path, it was not made for you. It suits you ill, the suffering you impose upon yourselves."

Heedless of the wind, upon the path they trod, a lord of shining caverns, a denizen of the woods.

"Its too late to turn back now," said the bramble and the thorns. "No way to go but on." They grew over the path behind, hiding it from view. The tangled vines a gateless wall.

" Reap ye fools, your fruitless harvest" said the withered boughs.  
On they went together, the lords, their hands entwined. The Elven hand grasping one it was not made to hold. Ill fitting and unsuited in the nature of its form.  
He ought to let it go, they said, for it would not be there long, and so, he holds it tighter. 

Further then along the road, they came upon a boundary. Down the rubble stones had fallen from the hillside. There was no way around it, there was no Passage through.  
In weary voices the stones, Upon their meeting hailed them. 

"Regret you now your choices, the error of your ways? You must hew us to move forward, must break what is and has been, to make room for what will be." 

The dwarf unpacks his tools, he must pave this route himself. His companion knows little of the ways of stones. But onward he presses, toils and labors. Then slowly appears a passageway through the ancient stone, the outward surface unmarred, the center, now hollowed. 

"Old things are passing" said the weathered earth, "if they are to last the ages they must be upheld." 

"Let them die" the dwarf lord said, who knew now when to hold things fast, and when to let them go. 

He wept, then for aging things, for things he knew were gone. He mourned for what had been, what he had known and cherished. Then he took other's hand, too large for his own and rejoiced for what would be.

Upon the weary earth, the night began to fall. Black its shroud descended, dark and cold and still. The silver moon looked down, at its pale reflection, in the frozen water. The dwarf lay down to sleep, weary of his work and Legolas stood guard watchful now, unmoving. 

"Look up" says the grass, the sparse brush and wild rose.  
"Look up at the sky, at the moon at the eternal things that give light to us forever. Let them fill any hollow left within your heart. You do not need the love, of things that fail and fade and fall. How come you to love them so, why stay with them still." 

Eyes, obedient looked toward celestial beings. Far from himself and from the earth, yet as he stared one fell and its light went out.  
It descended from the heights so far out of his reach. His eyes return to the sleeping form laying on the ground.

A smile upon his lips the Elven lord replied, 

"I was meant to love the stars."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to fufill the promt "coming to terms with interspecies love". I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you liked it to.


End file.
